


This Is Not Your End

by anstoirm



Series: Fireteam Ward [2]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Character Death, Gen, Origin Story, guardians gone rogue, will add tags as characters make appearances
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-10
Updated: 2018-07-22
Packaged: 2019-06-08 01:31:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15232398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anstoirm/pseuds/anstoirm
Summary: He's lost (nearly) everything. She lost everything once, and isn't about to let it happen again.A chance crossing of paths leads to a new beginning for both of them, and a fresh start for a fireteam that's falling apart.





	1. Slash & Burn

**Author's Note:**

> no overarching plot here, just a character piece exploring two of my guardians' stories.

She’s stopped keeping track of how long she’s been out here.

Not out of malice, or distaste, or disillusionment, not because she’s lost faith in the City and the Vanguard, no, Nyx-14 just finds the practice counterproductive. So, she stopped counting the days years ago.

That doesn’t, however, mean her ghost has stopped as well.

“It’s been two thousand, nine hundred and twenty days since your last communication with the Vanguard.” Kessler says, materializing in the air just close enough to her scope to be a pointed nuisance. “Would you like to hear Cayde’s latest update?”

Her eyes remain focused on the high-powered scope she’s been glued to for the past five hours since before dawn, watching the camp of Fallen that’s steered just a bit too close to a Golden Age ruin that’s drowned in powdery white snow. Dark clouds loom on the horizon, threatening more. “Send an acknowledgement and archive it.”

“Done.” Her ghost says, and she can hear the mild irritation in its voice, its facets fluttering in her line of sight. “That’s eight years of archived, acknowledged but unread vanguard updates, Nyx. I’m surprised Cayde continues to reach out.”

She hums in response, moving for the first time in several hours–in order to gently bat it out of the way. “They’re doing fine without me.” She says, flatly ignoring the reproach, and her jaw light pulses with amusement at the audible huff Kessler lets out. How a ghost can huff, she’ll never know.

“If we didn’t have eight years of backlogs telling us _mostly_ that, I’d disagree.” It mutters, dematting in a spark of light.

“You still do.”

“But I still–hey!”

She smiles, her scope shifting slightly to sight on the camp of Fallen as they pick up and move north-west–away from the ruins she’d already poked through last week. Either they’d already picked it clean too, or they were oblivious. She highly, highly doubts they’re oblivious. There’s movement in the corner of her vision. Her gaze leaves the scope, making a quick scan of the horizon before returning to her previous target. “Kessler, approximate location?”

“Three miles outside of what I believe was once known as ‘Geneva’.”

“Anything to see there?” Nyx asks jokingly, only half paying attention to the synthesized voice in her helmet.

Without missing a beat, Kessler replies: “Well, according to this travel guide you pulled from a database at what was a University hundreds of years ago, there’s a _lovely_ ski resort open this time of year.” A moment passes. “What’s a ski resort?”

Her sniper rifle pans over the snowy horizon and moves to the target she’d sighted moments ago; two dregs and a vandal, running to catch up to the camp she’d been monitoring. Eyes narrowing, Nyx watches as the moving troop all stop and turn to the approaching ones, who then proceed to animate in an excited manner.

“Really? No witty retort this time?” Her ghost quips. She doesn’t respond.

The Fallen that had been moving away from the ruins double back and head for them instead, at double the speed.

“That can’t be good.” Nyx mutters, finally lowering her scope and pushing herself to her feet. Her rifle at rest, she reaches behind her quickly to brush snow off of her cloak, and then begins moving forward at a brisk pace–retracing the path she’d already taken the day before.

Kessler materializes into existence outside of her helmet again. “I’m picking up scattered chatter. It’s disorganized, but I think they found something.”

“I thought we picked that place clean.”

“Yes, well, you and I haven’t spent the past dozen generations or so as professional kleptomaniacs.”

Eyes rolling behind her helmet as Kessler retreats back into it, Nyx slings her rifle across her back and then doubles her own pace; hopefully she can reach the ruins before or alongside the Fallen patrol. She’s not sure why, exactly, but something Tevis would have described as a 'vibe’ has taken root in her head–and she can’t identify if it’s because of the Fallen or something else, but something felt wrong.

Light guide her, blah blah blah, something-something Speaker-talk.

“Betcha five hundred glimmer they’re flipping their lids about a lamp post or something stupid.”

“I carry all your glimmer, Nyx.” Kessler is quiet after that skeptical quip until Nyx reaches the halfway point back to the ruins, and her traveling zen is broken by a series of beeps she recognizes as surprise from them. “Hold on.”

She slows to a stop. “What is it?”

“I’m picking up a light signature back in Geneva.” Kessler replies, and her eyes roll again at the noise of curiosity they make directly in her ear. “It just flared for a second but now it’s almost gone. Weird.”

“ _’Weird’?_ ”

“Yeah, weird. Like a guardian just fired off one of their super charges.”

Nyx frowns in confusion, and she lifts a hand to tap a gloved finger to the side of her helmet. “How is that weird?” It wasn’t exactly uncommon for guardians in the field, and Nyx had never expected to always be the only one in any given area.

Kessler lets out a heavy sigh at the question. “Well, first, because aside from the Fallen patrol heading in the _opposite_ direction, I haven’t picked up any signatures of enemies nearby. Second, because that light signature is now gone.”

“Or very, very weak?” She asks, hesitating for a moment as she struggles to decide between finding out what the Fallen had found so exciting and now investigating this anomaly. It’s a short struggle; she changes her direction and double-times it back towards Geneva.

Kessler transmats her sparrow down without her having to say a word, and she immediately hops on and guns the throttle.

Kessler sounds worried when they respond. “Or very, very weak. Better hurry.”

* * *

Five hundred years ago, Nikon never made it to the Last City. Five hundred years ago, while looking for a way to get there, he instead found survivors. Five hundred years ago, he swore himself into protecting them, gathered wayward guardians to do the same, and for six generations he’d managed it.

Five hundred years ago, Nikon was brought back to life in a blinding flash of light and desperately dragging breath into lungs that hadn’t worked in decades, confused and panicked and wondering _what in the hell had just happened_. This time around there was less confusion, a decent amount of panic, a hell of a lot more anger, the light was from muzzle flashes, and the difficulty breathing was from the hole that had been blasted into his side.

And this time, he does know what’s happening.

His back hits the fountain they’d never managed to get working with a crunch of armor against brick, and Nik’s expression twists into a grimace, hand moving to his wound; he was lucky that grenade launcher round had struck where his armor was thickest, otherwise he’d have been cut off at the torso.

And right now, on his own, surrounded by enemies that had gotten the better of him, Bit couldn’t risk reviving him without the possibility of being destroyed himself. Which is damned awful considering it’s not just the gaping hole in his side that he’s suffering from.

“ _You’ve got a major contusion in addition to the launcher wound, two broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder, a minor gash on your left temple, and three broken fingers._ ” Bit says almost as a direct response to that thought.

Nikon stifles the impulsive urge to snap at Bit for it; he knows it’s just the ghost’s way of dealing with stress.

“Well you look like a fucking mess.”

His expression is taut with fury as he focuses on the warlord that had just spoken. Nik was worse off than he thought–he hadn’t even noticed the man approaching.

The warlord–who had cheerfully introduced himself as Valen before proceeding to metaphorically curb stomp him–crouches down next to his prone form and pulls off his helmet, an appraising eye and lifted eyebrows on his face. He clucks his tongue. “Seriously. That looks like it hurts.” Nearby, one of Valen’s followers snorts out a laugh as she walks by, followed by a ghost that pauses long enough to look at him.

Of all things, Nikon hadn’t expected to be fighting against other guardians. It had caught him off guard, thrown him off balance, and between that and their sheer numbers he hadn’t stood a chance. Two, three, five years ago, when it was him and five other guardians as opposed to only him, they might have won.

He fucking loathes that it’s another titan leading these rogues–Bit kept him updated on the City’s events, and according to everything he’s heard titans were meant to be the City’s absolute defenders. The staunch protectors of humanity's survivors.

Valen sighs in response to Nikon blatantly ignoring him, tapping his handgun against his shoulder. “You brought this on yourself, honestly. Waste of your time and talent guarding a group of humans that can’t even take care of themselves!”

“That’s what guardians are supposed to do.” Nikon finally responds, his voice tight and seething.

“Is it? We’re an army of the _dead_ , you sanctimonious moron. What use does the Traveler have for the _living_?” Valen tuts at the notion, giving him a pitying shake of his head.

His blood boiling, Nikon starts to spit something back, but several shouts from farther in the square reach them, and both he and Valen turn to watch as one of the settlers makes a panicked sprint for escape. Valen’s followers raise their weapons to fire, and Valen lets out a sharp whistle–every single one of them freezes. Nikon watches Valen’s blank gaze follow the settler, and then, just as she reaches the barricade, he lifts his handgun and fires off a single shot. Her head snaps forward, and she collapses in a heap with her blood staining the white snow around her.

“ _That was Elena._ ” Bit tells him quietly, and nausea builds in his throat; she’d announced to the settlement that she was pregnant last week.

“You assholes got control of this or what?” Valen snaps at the group of rogues that had destroyed everything Nikon had spent the past few hundred years defending. There’s a few returned shouts of affirmation. “Good. Hey, find that girl and bring her here already!”

Icewater floods Nikon’s veins.

Turning back to him, Valen fixes him with a cheery grin and reaches forward, fingers catching under the edge of Nikon’s helmet and yanking it off none too gently. Valen’s grin widens into something wolfish at the furious expression that greets him. They stare at each other. “You know, usually I’d keep you alive. The ones with the strongest wills are always the most fun to break.” Valen says, waving his handgun at him as he speaks. “But _you_ –you’re a problem. A born leader. Far too much trouble to risk it if you ask me.”

Valen reaches his free hand out to tap a finger on Nikon’s chestplate, and Nikon grabs his wrist, his lips curling back in a snarl–

–a searing pain sends a shock of static across his vision, white-hot agony erupting through his nerves as the still heated barrel of a pistol is dug into the wound in his side. Nikon lets out a grunt, his jaw grinding and eyes squeezing shut as he swears a blue streak within his own head.

Well, at least there’s a possibility the wound’s just been cauterized.

As soon as the gun is removed, Nik grits through the pain and jumps up, intent on catching Valen off guard and stealing the weapon from him. 

Without flinching, Valen sidesteps the lunge and cracks an elbow across Nikon’s jaw; he crashes to the ground, armor crunching against the decaying brick underneath.

He hears gunshots through the blood rushing in his ears, knows that more of his people are dying, hopes like hell that Leilani managed to slip out of the boundary like she’d always been so good at doing. Knows that she wouldn’t leave without him, and hates himself for this failure. Nikon spits blood to the snow, starts to push himself up off his knees, and a hand grabs hold of the back of his chestplate and yanks him up; he’s thrown back against the fountain once more, and when he tries to rise again a heavy boot lands on his chest and forces him down.

Valen leans his weight onto that leg, tilting his head to one side as he grins down at Nikon. “Hey, hey, hey, now, calm down. Relax.” Nikon does the exact opposite, grabs hold of a burst of strength and tries to shove Valen off in spite of the wound in his side flaring in protest. All Valen has to do is give a mild push back to end that struggle. “I said fucking _relax_ , hero.”

He’s never felt so helpless, and it’s overwhelming.

“Boss, we found her!” Comes a shout across the courtyard, and two pairs of eyes focus across the way as another titan, flanked by a hunter, drags a struggling girl with tanned skin and long black hair down the steps of the building towards them.

Nikon’s throat constricts with unfamiliar panic, seeing her being yanked forward under a bruising grip that could easily snap her arm in two; she’s a strong-willed girl and always has been, but there are tears cutting paths down her cheeks, her usually straight hair wild and knotted from struggling and her clothing ripped and dirtied.

In one day, Leilani, the mayor’s daughter, the headstrong girl he had taken under his wing, the one he almost considered a younger sibling, was reduced to a terrified girl with dead friends and family, and Nikon dreads what Valen intends for her.

The second she spots him pinned to the fountain, instead of struggling to pull away she tries to run towards him; the titan holding her yanks her back hard, and she yelps in pain.

He’s going to kill _every fucking one of them_.

“Fucking finally. What, did she crawl under the floorboards like a fucking cockroach?” Nikon’s struggling renews, and within seconds Valen reaches back and clocks him over the skull with the butt of his handgun. “ _Knock it the fuck off_. Here, please.”

She’s thrown to the ground at his feet, and she immediately scrambles towards him. He half expects Valen to stop her, hurt her some way, and it’s almost worse the way he simply watches with a serene smile on his face.

Leilani’s hands hover over Nikon as she kneels next to him, her lips trembling and eyes wide with fear and darting across his battered form, taking in the launcher wound and the gash above his eye, the charred or cracked or outright broken off sections of his armor. She can’t seem to figure out where to focus, where to try and help. He’s never looked even half this bad in her whole life, he knows.

“Nik…” She starts, her voice cracking and cutting off whatever she wanted to say.

Breathing is getting harder to manage, exacerbated by the heavy weight planted squarely on his chest. Nikon grimaces, shooting a steely look at Valen–who only looks even more amused in return–and then says to her, “Hey, 'Lani. It’s–it’s gonna be alright. I promise.”

Wincing, he reaches out and pulls her forward, closes his eyes and presses a kiss to the top of her head, and feels his heart break at the choked sob that leaves her as she leans her forehead against his shoulder.

Somehow, _somehow_ , it’s going to be alright. He knows it is.

“Ohhh, this is so _touching_. So sweet. I think I’m crying. Hey–Roland, am I crying?”

There’s a moment of thick silence before he receives an answer. “Sure are, boss.”

Nikon’s eyes open and settle on Valen, at the bright smile on his face and animated gestures he’s making, and feels white-hot rage fill him up again. With how little strength he has left he knows fighting back wouldn’t end well, but he wants nothing more than to get to his feet and throttle Valen with his bare hands.

“Hey, Dixon, here, swap up. Keep him there.” There’s a brief second of freedom as Valen finally steps back, and Nikon tries to stand.

He receives a boot to the skull for his trouble, and then he’s pinned against the fountain again.

Son of a _bitch_.

Leilani stands and lunges for the other titan now holding him down, but she’s snagged around the waist by Valen and dragged back. He wants to shout at him to leave her the _fuck_ alone, but his head is filled with static and cotton and the best he can manage is a groan.

So instead, he watches as Valen’s grin drops from his face and he glares at Dixon. “What the fuck, man. Really? A little overboard, don’t you think?” As though three minutes ago he hadn’t just hit Nikon over the head with his gun. “C'mon, I want him conscious for this.”

Dixon doesn’t sound the slightest bit apologetic when he responds. “Sorry, boss.”

Valen lets out a long-suffering sigh and shakes his head, shoving Leilani back to the ground. Before she can move towards Nikon, he crouches and throws an arm around her shoulder, pointedly meeting Nikon’s baleful stare as he holds her there and leans close to her ear. “Have you ever wondered how to kill a guardian, sweetheart?”

Leilani’s voice shakes when she answers, her gaze unfocused and long. “No.”

“Allow me to demonstrate.” The gleeful expression returns to the warlord’s face. Then, to him: “Summon your ghost.”

The grin vanishes once again when Nikon refuses. The look in his eyes sharpens into iron-forged steel in an instant, and Nikon can’t decide whether the cheerful persona or this one is more unsettling.

Valen’s hand tightens on Leilani’s shoulder, and he presses his handgun to the side of her skull. She sucks in a breath at the same time he feels his own stop; tears begin pouring freely from her eyes, hands shaking, lips pressed into a thin line to keep herself from crying out loud.

Throat thick with an indescribable emotion, Nikon closes his eyes and then summons Bit into the palm of his hand. The ghost blinks up at him steadily and makes a soft chirp of understanding, and that only serves to make him feel even worse.

Valen’s hand immediately snaps out and grabs Bit, and that soft chirp turns into metallic noises of unmistakable terror.

“You see this?” Valen says aloud, his fingers curled tightly around the struggling ghost in his hand as he holds it in front of Leilani’s terrified face. “This is the source of every guardian’s power. People argue that the source is the traveler, and I guess they’re right in a way–but a guardian’s connection to the traveler? Right here.”

Valen stands, stooping briefly to place Bit on the ground. Bit attempts to flit away the second Valen’s fingers leave him, but the titan’s boot snaps down on the ghost before it can get anywhere.

“Destroy the ghost, and _whoop_ ,” There’s a sickening pop accompanied by tinny, pained shrieks from the ghost as Valen leans his weight onto the foot holding it down–and those cries abruptly go silent as countless cracks split his center orb and the light within it goes dim. “There goes the connection.”

Leilani’s hands lift to cover her mouth in shock.

She had always loved Bit.

Nikon feels like the wind has been knocked out of him, some kind of metaphysical thread _snapping_ within him as Bit dies, and suddenly every injury feels three times worse than it already had. He’s sure if he had been standing he would have been brought to his knees. 

The only light he’s got left is what’s in him now. No more cheating death.

“A lot more fragile than you’d think they would be.” Valen muses cheerily, and the cruel grin on his face chills Nikon to the bone.

There’s nothing but silence save for Leilani’s cries and the distant whoops of Valen’s guardians as they ransack the building Carran had called home for multiple generations.

Then, Valen levels his handgun at Nikon’s chest. Nikon stares the barrel down defiantly, and prays to whatever deities were still out there that no matter what happens to him, Leilani will go on living.

She shrieks in despair and darts towards him.

There’s a flash, a bang, and then,

nothing.


	2. Intervention

_Horrified_ is the best word Nyx can find to describe her reaction to the scene she’s come across deep within the ruins of Geneva.

She’d figured that after slipping past the roving Fallen party and following Kessler’s careful tracking of the fading anomaly they’d come across some lost Pre-Collapse tech or perhaps a newly resurrected guardian—instead she’d found a warlord’s unrepentant slaughter of a group of human survivors living outside City walls.

And beyond that, the cold-blooded murder of a guardian.

She has no idea what’s going on, what’s happened, _why_ it’s happened, but it’s not hard to guess. Warlords weren’t exactly uncommon in the wilds outside of the City, and they had a tendency to prey upon survivors that had chosen to live there, but there was a difference between preying upon and outright _slaughtering_ them.

Most warlords she’d seen or heard about just used a show of force to steal settlers’ resources, not execute them.

Most. Not all.

She had seen this before. She watches the warlord turn the gun in his hand on a young girl, kneeling next to the body of the guardian the man had just shot and killed (someone she cared about?), and Nyx feels rage burn through her circuits. The void tears open around her.

“Go! Now!” Kessler says in her helmet, and Nyx vaults from the top of the ruined building she’d climbed through to get here.

Time slows as she freefalls.

Body shifting in midair, Nyx reaches forward and grabs hold of the void threads around her, shaping them into a purple bow glowing with light energy. With her other hand she grabs the bow’s string, and as she pulls it back an ethereal arrow takes shape.

She takes aim, and then looses the arrow drawn from the void.

It streaks through the air, the purple glow of it painting colors on the surrounding ruin and stone, and several of the warlord’s followers turn their gaze to it in alarm. Weapons level in her direction, but her gaze is focused solely on the warlord.

He turns.

The arrow strikes him in the chest.

In a glow of void the warlord’s body vaporizes, leaving behind a blinding font of light that snaps out more threads of void energy, ensnaring the goons unfortunate enough to have been standing close to their leader.

Her vaulted arc steepens, and she uses a burst of light energy to jump in midair and move further, her momentum carrying her towards the girl now blinking in a confused, shocked daze at the glowing purple light of the tether next to her.

Nyx lands a yard away from the girl, rolling with the impact, and in one smooth motion she yanks her hand cannon from its holster on her thigh and crosses that distance in a burst. The gun snaps up and a single fired shot pierces the skull of the goon that had been standing next to the girl.

Bullets echo in the empty ruins, but with Nyx’s form engulfed in the bright light of the void none of them can get clear shots.

Stooping as she runs, Nyx wraps an arm around the human girl’s midsection and hauls her to her feet. “ _Run!_ ” She yells, firing another shot at the closest man ensnared by her tether.

As she turns, Nyx catches sight of another glowing point of light nestled within the light of her void—and freezes in surprise. It’s a _ghost_ that’s blinking at her angrily, facets shifting and twirling as it attempts to revive its guardian.

Guardian.

The warlord was a _guardian_.

She catches sight of two more ghosts—both of the men she had shot down were guardians as well. An icy chill overcomes her at the realization. Guardians murdering people was so horrifically antithetical to everything she knew, everything _right_.

She didn’t have time to think about this.

Nyx turns back to the girl and finds her still standing there, very definitely in shock and trembling, but shock will get her killed, and Nyx hadn’t just intervened only to lose the reason for that intervention.

Grabbing hold of the girl’s hand, Nyx pulls her forward and forces her to run.

Gunfire and shouting follows them, but Nyx is well-versed in navigating ruins and destruction and their pursuers fall behind. An hour later, with the sun having set and darkness falling over the ruins of Geneva, they’re nothing but distant echoes.

Abruptly the girl yanks her hand free and then stops. “We can’t leave him!”

Halting, Nyx turns back to stare at the girl incredulously, though the expression is less effective with her helmet in place. “Leave who? The guardian? He’s _dead_!”

It looks like the girl wants to rebuke the statement, argue otherwise, but all that comes out is a strangled whimper of grief, and her eyes begin to well with tears.

Nyx deflates at the reaction; clearly the guardian _had_ meant a lot to her. She faces the girl and steps closer, her voice gentle. “I know he must have meant a lot to you, but if that’s true he wouldn’t want you to risk yourself to get him when there’s nothing that can be done. He’s gone, not even another ghost can fix that.”

She looks heartbroken. Nyx feels awful.

She wishes she didn’t know exactly what the girl was feeling at the moment.

There’s a flash of light and Kessler materializes next to them, its facets spinning furiously. “Actually, I’m still detecting a light signature.” Nyx starts to mention the warlord. “Not the ones you’d put down.”

The girl glances between Kessler and her, desperate, dangerous hope in her eyes, and Nyx is afraid to hope as well. “Kessler, are you sure? _Absolutely_ sure?”

“Definitely. It’s weak, though. Much, much weaker than when we first picked up on it. I think the only reason I’m getting it now is because we’re closer than we were then.”

Nyx’s gaze fixes on the girl. It’s not even a decision that she has to deliberate on to make—if the guardian is still alive, Nyx can’t in good conscience leave him behind. “Kessler, bring my ship in and transmat us up.”

Seconds after she said it, the roar of engines drowns out the ambient sounds of rusted and collapsing buildings and overgrown wildlife around them. Kessler demats again; her ghost knew her too well, it must have already known what choice she was going to make and had called the ship in before she’d said a word.

The hunter turns to walk towards the ship as it slows to a stop above them, and the girl stops her with a gentle tug on her arm. “ _Please_.” Is all she says.

“We’re going to get him,” Nyx replies, warmth blossoming in her chest at the way the girl’s face lights up. “It’ll be faster and easier to get back by ship. But I promise, we’ll bring him with.”

Whether he survived the trip back to the City—because Nyx has no other choice, since the girl _can’t_ survive on her own in the wilds—is going to be a toss-up. It’s a bleeding Traveler-gifted miracle he still had light left in the first place.

But the girl doesn’t need to know the odds and is pacified by the promise, following after Nyx like a lost puppy even after Kessler transmats them up into the ship. “My name’s Leilani.” The girl says, her hands writing together in worry as Nyx drops down into the pilot seat. “Nik always called me ‘Lani.”

Nyx pauses in her button pressing to disable Kessler’s autopilot, and glances back at Leilani. “Nyx. I’m sorry I didn’t get there sooner.”

“It’s—” Leilani starts to say _it’s okay_ , she assumes, and Nyx doesn’t blame her at all for not being able to finish the considerate but blatantly insincere sentiment.

Instead of commenting on it, Nyx finalizes the flight sequence and eases into the ship’s throttle heading back the way she and Leilani had run, arching over the broken husks of what had once been human civilization.

As they approach the square, Kessler materializes behind Nyx’s head and startles Leilani in the process. “Those bandits have holed back up in the city hall building; once we stop above the square we’re not going to have long before they get very angry.”

Nyx hands the controls back over to her ghost. “Keep the ship running dark and as far above as you can while still able to transmat. I’m not planning on retaliating, just dropping down long enough to grab the guardian. You’ll transmat both of us back up as soon as I’ve got him, and then take us out immediately.”

“Got it.” Kessler says, and then vanishes back into the ship’s subsystems.

Leilani speaks up. “I want to—”

“No.” Nyx cuts her off, and before she can protest Nyx explains the refusal. “I’m not planning on being down there for longer than half a minute at most, and you’re a lot less resistant to bullets than I am.”

Leilani looks unhappy with the logic but doesn’t say anything. Her hands continue to fidget, pulling at loose strings on the arms of her sweater, and as they ark down towards the square, she moves towards the center of the ship and sits down against the hull.

“Kessler, give me a ten-second warning once they notice the ship invading their space.” Nyx says, pushing herself up from the pilot seat and heading to the back.

“Should I give you a ten-second warning for any potential rockets streaking in your direction, too?” Kessler replies, voice coming in through her helmet.

Her facial plates shift into an unamused expression that only Kessler can read past her visor. “Just transmat me down, smartass.” It gives her a sassy beep in response, and a second later she feels herself tear through space and then drops to the cracking bricks and overgrown grass of the square below.

She bolts into action immediately, dashing for the crumbling fountain the guardian had been shot against. Skidding to a crouch once she reaches the slumped figure, Nyx grabs his arm and slings it over her shoulder, and with no small amount of difficulty hauls the titan _in full plate_ up off the ground.

It she was a titan herself, this probably wouldn’t be so difficult.

His head lolls sickeningly, and Nyx feels an overwhelming sense of discomfort; the girl obviously cared a great deal for ‘Nik’, and she doesn’t much care for the thought of bringing what amounted to his corpse on board for the girl to see.

She can hear shouts and loud noises coming from up the stairs of the city hall, the hoots and hollers of bandits excited for a hunt.

Nyx sets forward as quickly as she can manage with three hundred pounds of dead weight titan over her shoulder, and she just barely makes it to the underbelly of her ship when the bandits—and what looked like the warlord she’d assassinated hours ago—make it to the top of the building’s steps and take aim.

“Kessler, transmat _now_.” Nyx barks.

A few beeps of acknowledgement echo through her helmet, and she hears the echo of gunfire the moment space-time pulls apart and she reappears within her ship. She braces herself for the immediate acceleration, but the added weight of the titan over her shoulder nearly sends her tumbling anyway.

Once the ship’s motion evened out Nyx moves towards the hull and gently settles the titan against it as Leilani hurries over; Nyx quickly unclips her cloak from her armor and drapes it over him, holding out her hand to stop Leilani when she reaches for it.

“Don’t.” Nyx says. “You won’t want to see him in this condition.”

Leilani picks at the sleeves of her sweater again, looking like she wants to start crying again, but she nods in acceptance and settles down against the hull next to the titan. Her arms shift to wrap around her knees and her head leans forward.

“How long until we reach the City?” She asks her ghost quietly, settling down in the pilot’s seat as Kessler demats her helmet. Slouching into a relaxed posture, the lights of her eyes blink off for some sleep she hasn’t gotten much of since entering the European wild.

Kessler returns to the ship’s systems. “Three hours, seventeen minutes. I’ll wake you when we’re close.”

“Send Cayde a heads-up,” Nyx says, the synthetic equivalent of human internal systems beginning to cycle down slowly. Her voice gets even quieter so the girl sitting near the back of the ship can’t hear. “It’s going to be a miracle if that titan lasts long enough for the tower medics to even see him.”

“We can hope,” Kessler says, just as quietly.


End file.
